Former Secretary of State Rice Assailed by Students, Faculty, Former Students at Stanford

Anticipating former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's return to the Stanford University campus, student and faculty activists began demanding early this year that the University take the position that it is aware of Rice’s alleged offenses against human rights, the U.S. Constitution, and international law.

On May 3, members of the April Third Movement (A3M) from the Vietnam War protest era nailed a memo to the university president's office door, demanding that Stanford sever relations with the former Provost. The former students who led the fight 40 years ago to dislodge Stanford University from the War in Vietnam were joined by faculty, students, and peace activists from the local community who added color to the protest in Raging Granny regalia and orange jumpsuits with black hoods. A3M leader Marjorie Cohn, now president of the National Lawyers' Guild, said, "By nailing this petition to the door of the president's office, we are telling Stanford that the university should not have war criminals on its faculty."

Last week the former Secretary of State appeared at a dinner for selected students in a dormitory hall. While there she was asked to explain the use of waterboarding to which she replied, "we did not torture anyone". She referred to torture as "enhanced interrogation" and scolded the student saying, "do your homework." The conversation with Rice's denial was caught on videotape by a second student.

Rice's role in authorizing waterboarding in 2002 was detailed in a narrative released last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It showed that Rice played a greater role than she admitted last fall in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.